The Defects of Bodily Movement and How to Correct Them

138. Their defects of the bodily movements and how to correct them

All animals without reason lead their lives only through bodily movements. This is similar to those in us which our souls consent to.

However, not all bodily movements are good.

• Some are harmful even if they cause no Sadness or Joy at the outset.
• Some are beneficial, even if it is inconvenient at first.

These bodily movements can be good or bad.

• They almost always make that goodness or evil appear much greater and more important than they are.
• This causes us to seek the good and avoid the evil with more ardour and care than is appropriate.

Animals are often deceived by traps.

• In order to avoid small traps, they rush into greater ones.

Therefore, we must use experience and reason to distinguish between good and evil, and to know their true worth.

In this way, we will not mistake one for the other, and not to be led to anything to excess.

139. The use of the same Passions, insofar as they belong to the soul; and first on Love

Bodily movements make up only the lesser part of our selves.

This is why we should principally consider the Passions of the soul.

Of these, Love and Hate arise from knowledge and precede Joy and Sadness: except when these latter take the place of knowledge, of which they are species.

This knowledge is true when:

• the things that it leads us to love are truly good
• the things that it leads us to hate are truly bad.

Love is incomparably better than Hate.

• Love is extremely good, because by attaching us to true goods, it perfects us accordingly.

Love cannot be too great.

• The most extreme it can do is to attach us so perfectly to these goods that the self-love we particularly have for ourselves makes no distinction; which I believe can never be bad.

Love never fails to produce Joy.

• Love is necessarily followed by Joy because it represents to us what we love as a good that belongs to us.

140. Hatred

Hatred, on the other hand, cannot be so small that it does not harm, and it is never without Sadness.

This is because we are not incited to any action by hatred of evil, which we could not be better by the love of the good to which it is contrary; at least when this good and this evil are sufficiently known.

The hatred of evil is only revealed by pain.

This hatred is necessary with regard to the body.

• But this hatred is one that comes from a clearer knowledge, and I relate it only to the soul.

It is always with Sadness because evil is only a privation.

• Evil cannot be conceived without some real subject that is evil.

• Everything real has some goodness in itself.

And so that hatred which keeps us away from some evil, at the same time keeps us away from the good associated with it.

• The privation of this good excites Sadness.

For example, hatred might keep us away from someone’s bad habits.

• That hatred also keeps us away at the same time from his good company.
• We feel sad to be deprived of it.

Thus in all other hatreds, one can notice some cause of Sadness.

141. Desire, Joy, and Sadness

When desire arises from true knowledge, it cannot be bad, provided:

• that it is not excessive, and
• that this knowledge regulates it.

With regard to the soul

• Joy cannot fail to be good.
• Sadness cannot fail to be bad.

This is because the soul receives:

• all the inconvenience from evil consists through Sadness
• all the enjoyment of the good through Joy

If we had no body, we could not abandon ourselves too much to Love and Joy, nor avoid Hatred and Sadness too much.

If we had no body, we could not abandon ourselves too much to Love and Joy, nor avoid Hatred and Sadness too much.

But the bodily movements that accompany them can all be harmful to health when they are very violent.

On the contrary, they can be useful when they are only moderate.

142. Joy and Love, compared with Sadness and Hatred

Hatred and Sadness should be:

• rejected by the soul even when they arise from true knowledge.
• rejected even more strongly when they come from some false opinion.

Are Love and Joy good or not when they are ill-founded?

If one considers them with regard to the soul, Joy is less solid and Love less advantageous than when they have a better foundation.

Yet they are nevertheless preferable to equally ill-founded Sadness and Hatred.

So that when we are unable to avoid being deceived, we always lean towards passions that tend towards good than towards being cautious of evil.

Often a false Joy is better than a Sadness whose cause is true.

But this is not the same about Love, in relation to Hatred.

When Hatred is just, it only keeps us away from the subject that contains the evil from which it is good to be separated.

Whereas Love, which is unjust, attaches us to things that can harm, or at least that do not deserve to be so highly regarded by us as they are, which degrades and lowers us.

143. The same Passions, insofar as they relate to Desire

What I have just said about these four passions is true only when:

• they are considered precisely in themselves
• they do not lead us to any action.

When they excite Desire in us and that Desire regulates our manners, then:

• all the passions with false causes can harm
• all the passions with just cause can serve

When Joy and Sadness are equally ill-founded, Joy is usually more harmful than Sadness.

This is because Sadness restrains and creates fear. These lead to Prudence.

Whereas Joy makes those who abandon themselves to it inconsiderate and rash.

144. Desires whose outcome depends only on us

These Passions cannot lead us to any action except through the Desire they excite.

We must take care to regulate this kind of Desire.

This is the principal utility of Morality.

It is always good when Morality follows true knowledge.

• It always becomes bad when it is based on some error.

The most common error with Desires is that we do not distinguish between:

• things that depend entirely on us
• things that do not depend on us at all.

For those that depend only on us, that is to say, on our free will, it is enough to know that they are good, in order not to desire them too ardently.

This is because it is following virtue to do the good things that depend on us. It is certain that one cannot have too ardent a Desire for virtue.

Besides, what we desire in this way cannot fail to succeed, since it depends only on us, we always receive all the satisfaction from it that we expected.

But the fault that is usually committed in this matter is never that we desire too much, it is only that we desire too little.

The sovereign remedy for this is to:

• free the mind from all sorts of other Desires that are less useful
• then try to know very clearly the goodness of what is to be desired.